Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortenson’s newly minted Golden Globe winner Green Book is not, in an objective sense, a very good movie; its approach to the facile ways the racial divide in America can be healed with lazy “common sense” activities is positively Crash-esque, and it’s drawn heavy criticism from the family of Ali’s character, acclaimed pianist Donald Shirley, who say its story of an unlikely interracial friendship between its two leads is mostly bullshit. The film’s co-writer, Nick Vallelonga—also, not coincidentally, the son of Mortenson’s affable racist, Tony—might have been able to offer a defense of his movie on social media tonight, except he can’t, because he deleted his Twitter account after people found an anti-Muslim tweet he made back in 2015.
Per Variety, said tweet—directed at then-candidate Donald Trump—propagated the popular-among-racist-assholes belief that Muslim-Americans “celebrated” the fall of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Indeed, Vallelonga claims to have seen it himself, right there on the teevee. People were also quick to point out that Ali—who’s had a heck of a time lately trying to express his pride in his legitimately good performance as Shirley, while also doing his damnedest to take responsibility for his part in the movie’s rapidly teetering pile of defects—is himself a member of the Muslim faith, and might require more than sharing a beer and a family dinner to be totally okay with Vallelonga’s comments about members of his religion.
Seriously, though: What a shitshow. At least the rest of the film’s production team is doing just fine. In fact, let’s just pop open Twitter, and check to see what ol’ director Peter Farrelly is up to tonight…
Okay, we’re out.